Both Hoffman and Padilha recently resigned from Rousseff’s cabinet in a bid to run for public office as candidates of the ruling Workers Party in the states of Parana and Sao Paulo.

“The substitutions being made at several ministries today are part of the democratic calendar, they don’t alter our course. We will continue working hard to guarantee the proper execution of our programs and the fulfillment of all our goals,” Rousseff said.

Jose Henrique Paim will now serve as education minister, and Thomas Traumann will fill the post of Presidential Press Secretary.

Seven other cabinet members are also likely to resign in the coming weeks; these include the ministers of tourism, agriculture, industry and trade, and human rights.

The cabinet reshuffles come amid growing pressure on the government to turn around an economy that makes strides, stumbles, and then recovers.

Rousseff’s greatest challenges are the depreciation of local currency the real and stubborn inflation.

The real has fallen nearly 15 per cent against the greenback in 2013 and the central bank has reacted by pushing up interest rates to 10.5 per cent.

On Monday, the real closed at a further 1.1 per cent decline against the dollar.

Economists say inflation could rise to over 6 per cent in 2014 after reaching 5.91 per cent in 2013, according to the median forecast in a central bank survey.

57 founding members, many of them prominent US allies, will sign into creation the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on Monday, the first major global financial instrument independent from the Bretton Woods system.

Representatives of the countries will meet in Beijing on Monday to sign an agreement of the bank, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. All the five BRICS countries are also joining the new infrastructure investment bank.

The agreement on the $100 billion AIIB will then have to be ratified by the parliaments of the founding members, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing in Beijing.

The AIIB is also the first major multilateral development bank in a generation that provides an avenue for China to strengthen its presence in the world’s fastest-growing region.